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Films in the Reproduction of Library Materials
THE camera begins to cast a long shadow in the world of books, especially via the film slide. Not that photography is any stranger in our gates. We have all long enjoyed its products. It is familiar in art. We have had anastatic reprints of useful texts, that is, reproductions from zinc etchings. In fact the lithograph and every form of plate printing begins with a negative on an emulsion surface. Light is repeating on this prepared but insensate plate the photochemical transformation that has been occurring all our lives on the retina of the eye, though, thanks to the living nerve and brain, this image is with eyes followed by the miracle of seeing. Every resort to the camera is a resort to facsimiles of one sort or another. With facsimiles scholars are familiar. These run the gamut from photostat to collotype; that is, from the simple black and white directly recorded on sensitive paper to the delicate shadings secured by printing from a gelatin-covered plate, culminating in the color mimicry of a master like Jaffe of Vienna. With one of these reproductive methods, devised in recent years, we should each become familiar, as it is playing a role of increasing significance. Reference is made to the photo-offset process. In letterpress and lithographs the printing is done from a raised surface. In offset printing a plane surface is employed. The procedure begins with a film negative. This is then applied to a thin metal plate likewise emulsion-covered. The application is made under an arc light, the effect of which is to harden those portions of the emulsion that lie beneath the clear parts of the negative. Thus the image is repeated. The hardened portions of the emulsion take greasy ink; the rest, water. Both are applied continuously by the rollers of the printing press. The metal image is transferred to a rubber blanket, and the final print on paper is an offset from the rubber blanket. This process has come to be much used in the issue of dissertations from a typewritten master copy. An interesting variant occurs in certain of the Penn state studies in education, where the recto is given up to an abstract easily legible, while the verve carries the complete text reduced eight pages to one, thus requiring a reading glass. Number 8 in the series, consisting of 6 preliminary, 37 abstract, and 296 miniature pages, cost $107 for six hundred copies. The case of dissertations is a special instance of a general experience of ours also worth preliminary mention--scholarly studies in limited edition. Specialization in scholarship may need rare source materials and in turn lead to writings of limited numerical appeal. The needed rarities require journeys, borrowings, photostats, or other reproductions--all costly. The resultant studies, if exceeding the compass of journal articles, have had to be published at high prices, on subsidies, or not at all. A commercial publisher wants a thousand sales anyhow; a university press, an edition of six hundred; and the assisting foundations, as many as three hundred copies. ON BEHALF OF THE SPECIALISTThe case of the specialist has in recent years led to at least two notable actions--the establishment of a Documentation Division by Science Service and the formation of the Joint Committee on Materials for Research of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council. Dr. Watson Davis, with headquarters at 2101 Constitution Avenue, Washington, D.C., is director of the service, and Professor Robert C. Binkley, of Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, is chairman of the committee. Science Service, as set forth in Document 72, which can be had free on application, aims to aid in the dissemination of scientific contributions both published and unpublished. In the case of manuscripts submitted, it will endeavor to secure journal publication in abstract, and a film issue in full on individual demand at a cent a page and in positive paper print in legible size at five cents a page. Of their film service in connection with material already in print, more below. The case of the specialists served by the joint committee--humanists and social scientists--is more difficult, for their studies are apt to run longer. Accordingly, the committee directed Dr. Binkley to make a survey of methods of reproducing research materials. His response, in 1931, in a little photolithographic volume of 139 pages, bearing such a title in an edition of only 100 copies, may almost be said to mark an epoch, and in the expanded form now privately circulating in separate trial chapters will constitute an invaluable guide to the choice of publication medium suited to size of edition, and so forth. Over forty pages of this volume are given to film slides, and from it has emerged a plan for a publication service. NATIONAL ARCHIVES GIVES NEW IMPETUSFinally, the erection of the National Archives building in Washington, with the scholarly and resourceful Dr. Vernon D. Tate as chief of the Division of Photographic Reproduction and Research, has given new impetus to the scholar's demand for easy command of source materials irrespective of his place of residence. Such our experience, such the stage set for the entrance of the film slide in the attempted role of resolving the dual library problem--first, to save the record of civilization, and, second, to equalize the access of scholars to it. The film slide at once challenges comparison with the photostat. The images from both these processes are at once usable in the original negative after processing. Compare the offset process--so cheap in an edition of six hundred--where the print you read is impression number four in a series. Film slide and photostat are both soloists; that is, they produce an edition of one, though they will retain their economic advantage over other facsimile processes when more than one copy is needed. The base of each is cellulose, though one is opaque or at least only mildly translucent, while the other is transparent. This proves to be an important difference and more than cancels the advantage possessed by ordinary photostat paper in being four to six times cheaper than ordinary 35 millimeter film (according to absence or presence of perforations in the latter), for light can be forced through the film even greatly reduced in size and so can set a legible text on a screen. CAN PHOTOSTAT TAKE THE LEAD?This suggests the second main difference between the two--the film negative in the slide form is a miniature, while the photostat is full sized or only partly reduced, but the miniature requires optical aid, and these attempted aids have in the past proved both costly and unsatisfactory. Granted, however, as is steadily becoming the fact, that they can attain efficiency and moderate price, why should not the photostat take the lead once more by reducing, too? The first answer, which is really not an answer at all, is that existent photostat machines are not normally set up to reduce more than half height at an operation. It takes three operations, therefore, to reach an eight to one reduction; that is, to bring a text eight inches high down to the free width of a 35 millimeter film. However, Dr. L. Bendikson, of the Huntington Library, gets an initial reduction of 3.4 diameters by removing the bookholder, raising the camera with a wooden platform five inches high, and placing the object on a board on the floor, thus securing the desired increase in distance from lens to object. As he points out, "there is no optical limit to the amount of reduction possible with a photostat camera, namely by turning the prism sideways (instead of downward), and using an easel to hold the object," but space conditions in the laboratory might prove embarrassing. TRY TO IMPROVE PROCESSINGThe effort thus to overtake the film slide would, however, be futile, because an eight to one reduction is child's play for the film. Sixteen to one is the usual newspaper reduction. Higher still, twenty-three to one, was (unwisely) attempted in the case of the AAA and NRA hearings. The grain of the emulsion is the chief determining factor. The letter lines finally get lost in the particles of the medium. In other words, you can write your name in sand with a stick but not with a fountain pen. Mr. V. E. Pratt, president of the International Filmbook Corporation, claims that the grain of the film would allow reduction of newsprint to fifty, but that clotting in the processing defeats the effort. He thinks M. Dagron in 1871 had a way to avoid this but the art is lost. So he is trying to improve processing. Dr. Binkley reports his having made for him a legible enlargement from newsprint reduced 32 diameters, and enlarged back to full size. An ultimate reduction of 25 diameters of 7 point type might come to be practical under favorable conditions of text and emulsion, but it is questionable whether the film would stand the heat resulting from the use of a light powerful enough to penetrate effectively so fine a mesh of words. The photostat, however, drops out of this particular race, for below legibility it depends upon either a magnifying glass or reflected light, since it is opaque. But neither glass nor balopticon is usually good on lower than quarter size, that is, two diameters, though eight remain possible. There is not enough white left uncovered to reflect sufficient light to afford necessary contrast for vision. Admiral Fiske, however, claims that his monocular Fiskeoscope, the patents on which have now been acquired by the International Filmbook Corporation, is good to lift 7 diameters; that is to increase the area of vision forty-nine times. BINOCULAR OF LOW POWERBut even if the admiral is over-sanguine, and the magic lantern family fails paper in low reduction, we need not give up yet. There is the binocular microscope of low power to fall back on. Of this procedure Dr. Bendikson is a stalwart champion. His preferred course is to reduce the pages to about 5 centimeters (2 inches) in height on photostat negatives, paste these negatives in rows on black paper, then reduce them collectively to any scale desired, say, 2, 3, 4, or 5 centimeters. Thus, a 5 by 8 inch filing card could carry 40 or 50 pages and be read with a wide field 7 or 8 diameter binocular microscope. This instrument is rigged up on a standard that allows swinging to a position convenient or reading, and Dr. Bendikson claims that the reading is done with no additional fatigue. This binocular is a costly instrument, but it may be said that an outstanding authority in the field of reproduction is known to expect that a binocular of his devising with magnification up possibly to 15 diameters, and a selling price of around $35, may appear in the next few months. All agree that a binocular is far less tiring than a monocular, which latter, while useful, should be restricted to brief examination for identifications. This same expert is also devising such a monocular to be added to the list already available. It will be noted that the camera has been brought into play at least twice in this process, and three times if the standard photostat is employed. In fact it seems certain that a second employment in order to get a positive would be required in any case of low reduction if to be read either by balopticon or microscope, for neither could probably stand the loss of light in a white on black print. The film could, of course, do the job with two operations. Further, it is to be added that manufacturers advise storing the negative film and using a positive from it. Future reproductions could thus be made from the negative, whether film or print is desired. In case this counsel were followed, then paper and film would once more come to a tie in so far as cost of material is concerned, if the right photostat machine can be found, and reading a print reduced 8 diameters via balopticon or binocular (with its narrow field) is regarded as tolerable, and if a reduction of 16 diameters is regarded as normal for films. The paper employed in the former case would be four times the amount of film used in the latter case but film costs at least four times as much as photostat paper. It should here be said that the very practical Science Service confines its reduction of 7 point type to about 8 diameters in its ordinary provision of filmed articles for scientists. And, finally, the storage problem certainly looks simpler with card prints than with film rolls. So far then has paper kept pace with its young and daring rival--a bit groggy at 8 diameter reduction equaling its opponent's 16, but, with several determined experts continuing attention, the race cannot be said to be over. Thus, the mechanized photostat under the trade name Dexigraph has duplicated a million catalog cards for Yale at three cents each, and Dr. Bendikson has furnished at one to two cents apiece his so-called "economy photostats," that is, eight to twelve pages on a sheet 9 by 14 inches or sixteen to twenty-four pages on a sheet 14 by 18 inches, with legibility retained, he claims. No library is offering a cheaper filming service except the Biblio-Film Service organized at the library of the United States Department of Agriculture in November, 1934, and on January 1 of this year transferred to operation by Science Service. Here 35 millimeter, single frame film negatives in low reduction ratio (9 to 14 diameters) are provided at a cent a page plus a service charge of to cents; minimum order, 25 cents. This is short run unique copy work, where the cost of materials and processing form a small proportion of the cost of service. Here Dr. Binkley thinks that "paper has every chance to gain on filming," especially since "filming and storage simplicities are another argument for paper." Dr. Davis, of Science Service, however, does "not believe that greatly reduced size photographic copies upon paper are likely to compete with microfilm in the near future.... There is no reason why reduced size photographic images cannot be placed upon paper just as effectively as upon film.... The difficulty is in developing a suitable reading device.... It is not out of the question to develop a reading machine which will read satisfactorily from paper. We have this type of reading machine on our list of possibilities for the future." It is highly significant in this connection that a camera (the Folmer Graflex Photorecord), of which Dr. Binkley says "there is every prospect that the next generation of scholars will find it as indispensable as the typewriter," and with all accessories about as portable, should take not only 16 or 35 millimeter film but a long roll c 70 millimeter paper as well. Dr. Davis is quick to record his conviction that "there is an important place in microphotographic duplication technique for photocopy enlargements from 35 millimeter film," and this is precisely what Science Service will inaugurate on March 1; 6 by 8 inch paper prints from film (that is, a 25 per cent reduction of a standard letter size sheet, 8 1/2 by 11 inches) for five cents each. Hence, at last the truth is out--the two are not rivals but are going to wed. In the ordinary operation you will film, possibly at a high reduction ratio and then pull a print for study and filing, unless you take the Photorecord short cut of a quarter-size paper negative at once. WITH PEACE DECLAREDNow with peace declared we may take a good peek at the lassie that gave tradition such a fright. There are two outstanding characteristics: she is a traveler and ski. likes large activities. Most filming cam eras are portable, as the photostat machine is not. The typical scholar is apt to want scattered documents, with perhaps none of great compass. The camera fits in his pocket or a light case, and the film for four hundred pages fills only a tiny spool The millions of archival sheets copies abroad for the Library of Congress on Project A were the gathering of peripatetic Lemare and the like. Yale's filming of 50,000 Harvard surgical reports in a fortnight's time was done with a small camera built by the clever Frederic G Ludwig. Even after the camera becomes as common a possession of libraries as the typewriter, there will be plenty of work for the rover to do in striking off records in official and private hands. With the harvest delivered in small reels back home, decision whether and when to print can be made at leisure and on occasion. Meanwhile the text is available in minute form. FLAIR FOR BIG OPERATIONSBut the film slide has a natural flair for big operations and when it is mechanized to high speed and utmost economy of materials it tends to solidity and travels by truck. The machine that filmed some 300,000 pages of NRA and AAA hearings for ten or twelve libraries at a little over $400, in place of the nearly $6,000 asked by the reporter for hectograph copies, or the half million dollars it would have taken to print a paper edition, is a unique specimen, a device of the Recordak Corporation, a subsidiary of the Eastman Kodak Company, and stays at home. At present, it is attacking the newspaper problem and making an impression. It has put the five years of the New York Times covering the World War on 35 millimeter film at 16 diameter reduction and offers them for a little over $400--about the price of the regular edition when bound, or less than half the cost of the rag paper edition bound, and requiring less than 2 per cent of the original's storage space. Nine offices now send it their issues once a month for filming. Their number should be legion. Libraries can thus get positives at around the cost of binding. Several will be doing so in 1936. This is a most important movement, for the newsprint of the past two-thirds of a century is highly perishable. The files are going to dust under our eyes. And yet, being the nation's diary, they are of inestimable value as source material. How valuable may be inferred from the following scale of prices which single copies of American newspapers will now bring: to 1749, $9 per number; 1750-59, $8; 1760-69, $7; 1770-75, $6; 1776-79, $5; 1780-89, $4; and 1790-1800, $3. A dozen papers of the Colonial period have seemed so very important that libraries able to secure photostat prints have been willing to pay 17 1/2 to 60 cents a page for them. A file of the London Times from 1800 was offered three years ago for $7,500. Practically all our files of newspapers have to be reproduced. The camera here is our salvation. Dr. Bendikson advises reduction to 3 by 4 inches and printing of two such pages on a 5 by 8 inch card. The other way is microfilm. The Recordak camera for the rapid copying of checks and other business sheets is well known. It has just perfected a bound-volume copying machine which can run off about forty negatives a minute. A companion to it for similar handling of bound volumes of newspapers is now in course of manufacture. All these are heavyweights and not for sale. Science Service from January 1 has the counterpart to this book copying machine in one taken over from the BiblioFilm Service, and devised, as is its apparatus in general, by the fertile mind of Dr. R. H. Draeger, of the United States Naval Medical School. With this apparatus the library of the United States Department of Agriculture distributed over 300,000 pages on film in the first year of its operation. The low terms have already been quoted. Another large project is that of Edwards Brothers in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Through arrangements made by Eugene B. Power of that firm, quarters have been granted in the British Museum for the establishing of a filming office which will reproduce books in English possession on demand. The camera is of Mr. Power's invention, and the charge for single copies of films is expected to run to 3 or 4 cents a film page. Mr. Power, with the support of certain leading American libraries, is also soliciting subscriptions to films of all the books printed in English before 1550--which may be extended later to 1640. If ten subscribe, he thinks he can deliver 100,000 pages a year for $500. The first examples of this camera's work in London have just reached the New York Public Library. Similar service has been negotiated for Berlin, Paris, and Rome. The camera for the Bibliotheque Nationale is expected to be there in sixty days. The International Filmbook Corporation is more ambitious still. It proposes, among other services, to merchandise books in film form. Thus, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, with its 24,000 pages, 4,007 cubic inches, 100 pounds, and a retail price of $200 would come to 11 pounds, 200 cubic inches, and possibly $50. Twenty novels of 6,000 pages might drop from 10 pounds, 1,050 cubic inches, and $50 cost to 3 ounces, 20 cubic inches, and $2. The company's two reading machines, Teledex and Optigraph are not far enough along for public exhibition. So much for possibilities. The medium is economical and as adaptable to large as to small operations; to use in the field as in the laboratory. But before the probabilities can be forecast there are four other considerations to be faced--safety, longevity, copyright, and eyesight. The acetate cellulose film is less of a fire hazard than paper. Only this kind can be tolerated in libraries. Never entertain the glamorous nitrate of the movies, which is all too closely akin to gunpowder and automobile exhaust. Properly made (and the best companies, like Eastman and duPont, make it properly), it has as long a life expectancy as the best 100 per cent rag paper or alpha cellulose--that is, if it is kept free of the acid and grease of human touch, and is stored in proper humidity, temperature, and purity of atmosphere. Such the oral assurance given from the United States Bureau of Standards in a recent Washington conference, and this is borne out by the findings of the British Kinematograph. Society, as announced by the British Film Institute in its Leaflet No. 4, August, 1934. COPYRIGHT LAW HOLDSThe copyright law is not suspended by the appearance of this new medium of communicating written records, any more than it is legal to appropriate music in broadcasting, though so easy to do in each case. The author is exclusive owner of his copyrighted text for the full term of the grant, and if a copy is wanted it can be obtained lawfully only in the medium he chooses or allows. On this subject the National Association of Book Publishers and the Joint Committee of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council consummated an important agreement last August, of which the gist is as follows: A library, archives office, museum, or similar institution owning books or periodical volumes in which copyright still subsists may make and deliver a single photographic reproduction or reduction of a part thereof to a scholar representing in writing that he desires such reproduction in lieu of loan of such publication or in place of manual transcription and solely for the purposes of research; provided Yale University Library has incorporated such a notice in its printed order form for films. And eyes--there's the rub. Excellent cameras are already on hand and others more efficiently responsive to our particular need are coming into sight. But the means of restoring these economical miniatures to the sphere of quick and comfortable reading are not so far advanced. This comes in part from lack of standardization. Even the name of the new medium is not established--film slip, film slide, film copy, filmstat, micro-copy, microfilm, photo-micrograph--which? What width--16, 35, or 70 millimeters? Which way the text--lengthwise or crosswise? Films run which direction--perpendicular or horizontal--and left to right or the reverse, and down or up? Perforated or not, both sides or one? Single frame or double, and what length? High ratio of reduction or low? Camera practice varies in these particulars. The magnifiers are thus in confusion. Accordingly, in the Washington conference of experts referred to above much attention was given to projection. The reading of paper prints is a separate problem, since here it is reflected light with which we have to deal. In this sphere, either (1) keep the print up to natural visibility or the range of a two to four power magnifying glass; or (2) use a binocular microscope of seven or eight power; or (3) await a cheaper binocular. NEW PROJECTORS IN THE OFFINGTurning to projectors, it is agreed that they should accommodate both 16 and 35 millimeter films, take texts running both directions, and keep heat off the film. The instruments in the immediate offing will meet these conditions. The Recordak 35 millimeter adjustment, which is designed for newspaper reading, shows one-fourth of a double frame at once. The Draeger reading machine now being developed, with magnification stepped up to 14, will show the full width of a newspaper page and about a third the way down. The 16 millimeter adjustment in each case will take care of the entire page of a book. The Recordak is announced as likely to cost about $200; the Draeger, a fourth or third as much. The two differ in another important particular: Recordak throws the image on a reflecting screen; Draeger, through a translucent screen. A reader would use the Recordak for film reduced as much as 22 diameters, the coming International Filmbook's Optigraph for still smaller images, while the Draeger, Leica, and prospective Folmer Graflex projectors will accommodate moderate sizes. As for aperture, the Leica shows double frame (about 12 inches in length); the Draeger, single frame; the Recordak of 35 millimeters, a half frame (that is, quarter page); Filmbook, a quarter frame; and Folmer Graflex, variable. Under these circumstances, the library will do well to select a projector with the greatest number of accommodations suited to its characteristic need, and then order the film issue to match, for this can be done regardless of what the master film may show. A very striking gain is the proffered solution of newspaper preservation. A lasting medium is substituted for a perishable one, with cost not increased, and a saving of 90 per cent in storage space. Hopeless gaps in sets can be closed economically. The rare or distant text can be brought quickly into possession, when the scheme is widely on its feet. The rarity in possession may be spared by using a film reproduction or print. Interlibrary loans can be replaced by ownership of text. Large blocks of source materials can be brought under command by cooperative filming, or the library's photographer can capture them swiftly on the spot. The individual scholar, even in crowded apartments, can once more begin to own his materials; instead of depending too much on the institutional library. And the amateur scholar, on taking up residence away from great centers, need not lose his hold on scholarship. But what one loves and lives by he will continue to hold in the form of the author's creation, with no apparatus intervening to jar the tie.
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